The Floyd Files

Friday, January 23, 2009

New bus

If you are a person who is committed to public transport for whatever reasons, the creation of a brand new bus route is an exciting thing.

So, it was with interest that I saw that there is a new bus route running fairly close to our house, running from Karori, through Johnsonville, to the heart of the Hutt.

I mentioned this to the children, who, while watching buses in town yesterday, expressed a desire to go to the mysterious and exotic place called "Queensgate", which they had seen on the destination boards of a couple of buses on Lambton Quay. So the plans were laid....

I took the car to the bus stop - yes, yes, I know, but try walking all the way back up that hill almost 33 weeks pregnant with three tired children. It all went smoothly. Inspired by Alan, I asked the first bus driver to snapper Isabelle and I on my one snapper card. She waved Isabelle through. Hooray!

The children were very excited, especially as the new bus had one of those raised back seats which meant they sat up higher than anyone else on the bus. (Not that there were many others, but you expect that with a new service I guess). The route was fairly direct, except for a bit of a meander through Khandallah. The highlight was the motorway. Both older ones were particularly impressed when we passed a slower bus, and jubilant when we overtook a touring coach in Petone which had overtaken us earlier on.

Once at Queensgate, we did exciting things like ride the escalators (a particular highlight for Orla), and rode on the Andy Pandy ride ($2 for about a minute). Orla was so taken with the ride that she wouldn't get off, then once off, had a sit-down strike for a couple of minutes. As you do when you are two.

We went to one shop, where I bought Isabelle some glow-in-the-dark-dolphins, Aidan a slingshot propelled rocket (not as bad as it sounds!) and Orla a rhino stamp for a total cost of $9. Finally the children had fluffies and gingerbread men in one of the chain cafes (although I picked the one that did nice chocolates, and took care to buy a small takeaway package of adult treats).

The return bus came on time - this time the driver very compentently tapped on his console so that I could do the dual-snapper thing.

Happy birthday Grannie!

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Young children's behaviour - Louise Porter

I had written a superb review of Young Children's Behaviour: Practical Approaches for Caregivers and Teachers by Louise Porter, but it was all in my head while taking a shower a few weeks back. So I will have to be content with the bits and pieces that I can remember, which I will write about here.

Overall I really liked this book. Essentially it's all about a guidance approach to behavioural management - a Kohnesque approach which contrasts with the dominant behaviourist rewards/punishments/consequences ideas which are usually talked about in parenting books. I liked one Kohn quote so much that I'm going to reproduce it here:

There is a time to admire the grace and persuasive power of an influential idea, and there is a time to fear its hold over us. The time to worry is when the idea is so widely shared that we no longer even notice it, when it is so deeply rooted that it feels to us like plain common sense. At the point when objections are not answered anymore because they are no longer even raised, we are not in control: we do not have the idea; it has us.

It refreshing and interesting to have access to a complete body of work that forms a comprehensive alternative to behavioural management - especially if the star charts and times out are not working.

Porter has what I found a slightly unusual way of making her points. She tends to write: "This is the way it is (insert twelve references)". That makes for quite an accessible writing style and an impressively long reference list at the book's end. However, this means that she does not lead you into her argument. This is fine if you sense some kind of truth with what she is saying ("Yes! I had always thought that"). But it is disatisfying if you remain unconvinced, or know of other references not included on the list that seem to take the opposite position.

For example, mixed age early childhood education is dispensed with in two paragraphs as essentially suboptimal. However, another book that I have read recently confirmed my hunch (see my Vygotsky post a week or so back) that from a Vygotskyan sociocultural perspective, there are gains to be made with mixed age groupings - gains also backed by research. And I kept thinking "Well yes, that may be the case in the creche-like environment you are describing, but in a Playcentre we have a different adult-child ratio. And the littlest ones are accompanied by their parents. So that means that the objections raised are far less of an issue"). It made me want to go and investigate some of the source material further.

This book is - as the title suggests - primarily for early childhood professionals rather than parents. As such, it seems slightly pro-childcare over parental care - or maybe that was just the lens I read it through. Certainly her comments about attachment theory seemed to bear this out. And yet some of what she was saying is not borne out by other authors I have read (and I know she has read Steve Biddulph because one of his books is on the reference list!). I may be misinterpreting things here though. I'm interested in getting hold of Children are People too, which is a similar book that she has written specifically for parents. This may inform me more of her thinking here.

However one statement in particular led me to search the internet to have a closer look at her cv.

"In 25 years of practice, I have never yet seen a well child from a well-resourced, well-functioning family displaying repeated aggression".

Goodness me I thought! Perhaps I just have a different definition of repeated aggression.... I wondered if she had always been a psychologist, or if she had been an early childhood teacher who had subsequently trained in psychology. Off to the internet to check things out.... Turns out that the 25 years of practice is in the psychological field. So I imagine that she has seen 25 years worth of cases that involved severe, repeated aggression sufficient to send people off for psychological referral, rather than 25 years of diffusing what I consider normal playground conflict (which may involve physical or emotional aggression due to the immaturity of the children involved). So that makes her statement a little less confronting for me.

I was also a bit disappointed that, while the section on aggressive behaviour was generally very useful, it did tend to fall into the old labelling of "aggressor" and "victim" thing. If only parents and educators were so omniscient that we could easily use these labels! How many times has the aggressive hit that has brought on tears been preceded by provocation, nasty comments or a sly whack unseen by adults? While aggression cannot be tolerated and intervention must occur, I have never found it useful to treat those involved according to those labels. Ironically enough, one of Porter's own hints I have found far more useful: "look for a solution, not a culprit".

However - the book is still a stimulating, interesting and valuable read. There were quite a few concepts that were comfortingly familiar from some of the coursework I have done over the past couple of years. And it is good to know that there is an alternative out there that practitioners are applying right now. The book is in its third edition, which says something about how successful it has been.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Yoga

I have been attempting to do a few yoga poses/stretches in an attempt to deal to my painful hips. This is almost impossible to do around children - as soon as I rolled out my mat yesterday, there were four of us sitting on it! The children copied my every move, which was a bit funny, especially if I did anything with my arms above my head - Orla's (and to some extent Aidan's) limbs are just a bit too short to do much in that direction! But they were surprisingly attentive and persistant with their efforts. When I tried to do anything lying down, Orla took that as an invitation to assume the feeding position. She was also intent on stealing any cushions I placed under various body parts for support and sat on them with her nudey butt (note to self - do not use lounge cushions as pillows).

Baby has now moved head down, so that has made things a bit more comfortable. I feel that I am getting very large (still measuring slightly big for dates).

So, the only real cure for the sore hips will be giving birth, which is still some time away. In the meantime, I will satisfy myself with taking "yoga for children" during the day.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Birthday girl

We have just had a lovely weekend of birthday celebrations for our little miss two. Grandma and Grandad came up for a couple of days - we had the family party Saturday lunchtime and the friends' party Sunday morning.

Thank you family for your lovely gifts! Orla knew exactly what to do (having been primed by the recent Christmas celebrations) and was ably assisted with the present opening by big brother, who, all things considered, was helpful and restrained.

All three have been enjoying her main present - a mini tramp. The difference between children and adults was truly underlined when it became apparent that a decent bounce on a trampoline is just what a small person feels like after a large meal.

Cool things about blocks #1

Sunday, January 04, 2009

Half-formed thoughts on Vygotsky

- Piaget had the idea that cognitive maturation is helped along by disagreements with age peers. This is the notion that children are constantly forced to readjust their lines of thinking or accept challenges to their ideas from their equals. This helps them to reflect on the perspectives of other people and become less egocentric. Challenges to their ideas from adults (or, by extension older children) would be less likely to promote cognitive development directly as children may just accept the viewpoint of the more authoritative partner without subjecting it to criticism. This would be an argument in favour of using external early childhood education, and ensuring access to multiple age peers (that is, for a 3-4 year old, lots of other 3 and 4 year olds).

Vygotsky seemed to view things a bit differently - that collaborative dialogue with more competent people thrust the child forward developmentally. Thus children benefit from working alongside adults and expert peers, or older children. Conflict is less important than how the relationship works (eg mutually respectful or not). Children then work within their zone of proximal development - that is, they do stuff with these experts that they can't do themselves, but which are not so challenging that the expert has to take over. This is neither an argument for nor against professional early childhood education - but it does give clues on how adults can help children (scaffolding) and gives a clear role for older children (or expert peers). These experts could be found in a home environment, or an early childhood centre. Age mixing would be particular beneficial from this perspective for the younger children. (Leaving aside for the moment the benefits to the expert peer).

- Now various Vygotsky-inspired researchers have found out that there are certain scaffolding techniques that are more useful than others in promoting cognitive development. An example is the use of open-ended questions and greater use of abstraction in questioning techniques, rather than focusing on the here and now. (For example, the difference between "what colour is the truck?" and "I wonder how we could transport that big rock up the hill"). Researchers have also found that adults who are trained in scaffolding techniques use them more effectively, and with better results. I remember being told during a Playcentre course that, nevertheless, adults are actually quite good at scaffolding without being taught, but I can't remember if this had a reference behind it or not. One researcher found that children did better on a task when they were scaffolded by a friendly (but well-trained) stranger than with their (untrained but much loved and familiar) parent. So this may indicate that there are benefits with having professionals in your young children's lives, so long as they are trained in these kind of techniques. Or, as a parent, you could just read up and train yourself, secure in the knowledge that you know how to do a lot of this stuff anyway - it's a matter of refinement and application. Or you could join Playcentre and train alongside others.

- So, keeping the Vygostkyian hat on, all this scaffolding stuff is seen through whatever cultural lens applies. Western children are usually the ones being researched on, usually in structured and child-centred environments. In some non-Western cultures, children "take greater responsibility for their learning through observation and participation in adult (rather than child-oriented) activities....[parents] rely more on demonstration, unobtrusive directing and monitoring. Furthermore, they do not praise their children's performance...) (This from Laura Berk and Adam Winsler, (1995) Scaffolding Children's Learning: Vygotsky and Early Childhood Education, Washington: National Association for the Education of Young Children, summarising the work of other researchers). So when I read that, I thought of the contrasts between a quality education system (child-centred, but inevitably structured to some extent) vs a "life is learning" home education system, which is more adult or family-centred. Neither necessarily better, just different (bearing in mind that the child in the education system still learns through life - after all, they do come home at the end of the session/school day, but that their learning is in two clearly defined realms).

Friday, January 02, 2009

Aidan spots a bikini

Thursday, January 01, 2009

Honours

Happy New Year!

A quiet one for us in the end last night, but Brendon and I made it up until just after midnight.

Had my usual bah humbug rant at the New Year's Honours list. I strongly believe that any public honours should be given for service - doing unto others without the primary aim being immediate personal reward. However, it seems as if honours are instead being given for achievement - being good at sport, making lots of money and employing people, holding high office, being at the top of your profession. While all of these can be positive contributions and can be celebrated, achievements usually come with their own rewards - money, status and the like. I think Honours should be our communities' chances to recognise other efforts, and should be reserved accordingly.

Anyway, had to chuckle at this guy who is proposing a return to "titular titles" (Dames, Sirs and the like) - not necessarily at the idea, but at his name - Mr Knight. Ho ho ho.